Toshiba Debuts 1 TB HDDs for Use in Notebooks

Posted on August 03, 2011 By Stuart Johnston

Toshiba this week announced a new line of internal SATA hard-disk drives (HDD) that are small enough to fit 1 TB of storage into a standard notebook PC as well as other tight spaced devices.

The MQ01ABD series, which Toshiba will start turning out later this month, will provide from 250 GB up to 1 TB of usable disk capacity on a 2.5-inch HDD in a 9.5mm high form factor using up to two 500 GB platters, according to a Toshiba statement.

Toshiba's drives will not be the first in the 9.5mm form factor, nor will they win any awards for speed -- turning in a modest 5,400 RPMs.

However, the company claims that the MQ01ABD has a record-setting "areal density" of 744 GB per square inch, an increase of 37 percent of data stored per square inch over previous 2.5-inch HDDs.

Additionally, the new drives require only 0.55 watts in idle mode, and provides acoustic performance of 19dB at idle and 24dB during seek operations.

Meanwhile, the MQ01ABD features 8 MB of buffer memory, an average seek time of 12 ms, an interface transfer rate of 3 Gbps, and a maximum media transfer rate of 1288.6 Mbps.

"The creation of rich content by consumers and businesses continues to push the demand for storage capacity," Joel Hagberg, vice president of product marketing for the Storage Device Division of Toshiba America Information Systems (TAIS)," said in the statement.

"The Toshiba MQ01ABD series provides not only the capacity and performance required by notebook and PC manufacturers, multimedia professionals, multi-room set-top-box and other power users, but also the benefits of a low-power, environmentally friendly drive,” Hagberg added.

Toshiba has not yet said what the new HDDs will cost.

Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.

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